Bill Murray Explains Why He Appeared in Ghostbusters Reboot

Original Ghostbusters star Bill Murray accepted a role in the Paul Feig-directed reboot to support the franchise’s new direction and its leading ladies.

“I was in that movie just because they asked me, and I knew if I said no, I was saying I didn’t support that movie,” Murray told IndieWire. “I felt like, OK, I’m going to support them because I support them as people. So I did that one and I would do this next one.”

That next one will return to the continuity established in the 1984 original and its 1989 sequel, both directed by Ivan Reitman, whose son Jason writes and directs the coming GB20. It ignores the reboot, led by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones, where Murray appeared as supernatural debunker Martin Heiss.

Murray, who has read Reitman’s script, is expected to appear in the next Ghostbusters alongside original co-stars Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts. He reunites with “some of the coolest people,” who participated in a “complete collaboration” in making the two movies.

“The relationship you have with those people as collaborators is not necessarily the relationship I have with Sony,” Murray said.

“For years, they said, ‘We can’t make another Ghostbusters because Bill Murray won’t change the deal he made in 1984.’ Well, no, I never did. And you know what? They made the movie. You’re the new guys, I’m the old guy. It was good enough for the other people so it’s going to have to be good enough for you.”

In 2014, The Daily Beast uncovered an internal email — leaked in the Sony hack — that revealed the studio once considered “‘aggressive’ litigation” against Murray, who “decline[d] to engage on Ghostbusters.”

Asked about his involvement with the new Ghostbusters during a cast appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016, Murray — who long resisted efforts for a third film — had a simple answer for appearing in the reboot: “It was only ’cause I knew these girls were funny.”

Sony releases the next Ghostbusters July 10, 2020.